While certainly women with experience in the legal profession will be well-prepared to become law-makers, understanding the dynamics of business would seem to be an equally crucial skill for legislators. In my next few posts, I’m talking to three people who can share their differing perspectives on the connection between business acumen and public service leadership roles.

U.S. Representative Abigail Spanberger represents Virginia's 7th Congressional District, and she is one of the 40 women among the freshmen in the 116th Congress. She earned an MBA in a dual degree program between Purdue University’s Krannert School and the GISMA Business School in Germany, and I spoke with her recently to find out how her business school education led to the House of Representatives.

It turns out that Spanberger was a nontraditional MBA student, and from the get-go she knew public service was her calling. She specifically chose a dual degree program where she’d spend a good deal of time in another country, believing that international business and its interrelation with foreign affairs would serve her well.

And while business school introduces students to a world that often incentivizes short-term gain, she says the big goals of government—to serve the public good and preserve long-term stability—aren’t necessarily inconsistent with business goals and can be realized by taking a middle path.

“Yes, there are ‘end-of-quarter results’ I’m looking for, but I think in terms of trajectories, because you can’t transform something as massive as our healthcare system, for instance, with one explosive change.” She believes the way to effect lasting change is to solve problems day to day while slowly working toward the desired end result.

Research suggests that companies with more female executives in decision-making roles outperform those led by men on several different dimensions, including return on equity and return on investment. So I asked Representative Spanberger for her thoughts on how the integration of more women will affect the performance of our federal law-making body.

“Well, first and foremost, representing the populace is foundational to the role that Congress is supposed to fill, and it hasn’t been doing that very well, on any dimension,” she decried. “Women are half of the population, so a quarter of the Congress is a step in the right direction.”

Beyond that, she believes the benefit of having women in the room is simply in having a more diverse set of experiences to draw on. “My lens of the world is driven by my defining characteristics as a woman and the roles I play as mother, wife, sister, and so on,” she pointed out. “When only men are making decisions, those other perspectives and experiences are minimized.”

It’s all about approaching problems from different perspectives, she added. Having as many perspectives as possible can only benefit all of us—different genders, cultural backgrounds, ethnicities—there are too many problems in the world to discount anyone’s good solutions.

As to whether Congress will emulate the business world and get better results with more women on board, that remains to be seen. “I can say that when a group of women gets together in a room, we tend to talk about solving a problem. We just want to get the work done, and we don’t need to take credit for everything. We are all used to being workhorses in our professional and private lives,” she told me. “In fairness, there are many men who have that same perspective, but women seem to bring it more.”

I asked her if there’s a case to be made for the MBA as a launchpad to a political career. “It is highly relevant!” she told me. “Business school was all about learning how to think through problems from different perspectives.” Having majored in French literature as an undergraduate, she said business school was a pretty sharp pivot to leadership, team-building, and quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis. “Even though I can’t say I ever mastered quantitative analysis, just being exposed to the discipline was valuable.”

And on a larger scale, she says, she can talk the talk and understand what businesspeople and business owners in her constituency are saying. “And when we’re talking about the impact that a piece of given legislation might have on businesses, I can draw on my education.”

I am newly inspired by the progress women like Abigail Spanberger have made toward altering the balance of power in government, and I’m looking forward to championing them as they change the world, one election at a time!